300 plus 300 = 600? You are using the old math if you believe that. Obama has signaled that he wants to add 300 American soldiers to the 300 already there. But don't believe that. As a subscriber I happen to get a daily email from Foreign Policy and they say there are already nearly 1000 in Iraq, not including civilian contractors and US government civilian employees from the FBI and other US agencies. Plus, there are special forces in the country that aren't officially acknowledged.

It seems reasonable to expect we will have thousands of soldiers in Iraq in a matter of weeks. We are going to send in Apache helicopters.Their crews and will need lots of protection for their air bases.

Maybe Russian and American soldiers will fight together in operations against the Islamic Caliphate. One can hope.

Only just a few weeks ago Obama was refusing to send troops to Iraq. Maybe he's grown more comfortable with using US force because he know America won't be operating unilaterally. A broad-based coalition (dare I say "diverse coalition"?) has formed against the Caliphate. America is lucky that we are able to be involved in such a diverse undertaking.

"Maybe Russian and American soldiers will fight together in operations against the Islamic Caliphate. One can hope."

Putin said that Russia is willing to be a partner of the US and EU, but the partnership must be based on equality, not on America's partners following Washington's orders. "We are not going to stop our relations with the US. The bilateral relations are not in the best shape, that is true. But this- and I want to emphasize-is not Russia's fault."

Americans live in The Matrix, not in the real world. One day Americans could wake up stunned by reality, or they could die from weapons of mass destruction and not wake up. Americans are nothing but cannon fodder for the neoconservative drive for Washington's world hegemony. The media on which Americans rely lies to them and prevents them from knowing any significant truths. Americans can learn that they lost the World Cup, but they cannot learn of their government's crimes and drive toward war, or of the responses of other powerful countries whose governments are unwilling, unlike England, Germany, and France, to be Washington's vassals.

Randall Parker wrote: “ Maybe Russian and American soldiers will fight together in operations against the Islamic Caliphate. One can hope. “

In view of the recent news that the Caliphate has just captured Syria's larges oil field, maybe the American and Russian forces will forget about Ukraine and start working together. If the Caliphate captures the much larger Iraqi oil fields, then this will change everything. Then it will be necessary to block their oil exports at least.

Yes, that's very American; however it's never a good idea to mix politics with economics when it comes to foreign policy. It always ends up like peeing to the wind. When has Russia broken its contracts and blocked its exports of gas to Europe because of a foreign policy disagreement?